Tag: ppc advertising

Are you a retailer or e-commerce store owner? You’ll be happy to hear that Bing has announced the launch of product ads in quarter 3, later this year. From their blog:

“Product Ads pulls inventory from an advertiser’s real-time product catalog and creates the new rich ad format – delivering key details of the product offer that a user would need to make an informed decision before clicking to the advertiser’s site.”

Google recently released second quarter financial earnings for 2012 and the results have some webmasters thinking… What does a 42% increase in revenue (over the second quarter of 2011) really mean?

Since the dreaded Penguin and Panda updates, most SEOs agree that results haven’t been as relevant and that bad organic search results are leading users to click on paid ads.

In fact, Wordstream just came out with a clever infographic detailing paid vs organic listings. Did you know that 45.5% of people can’t identify paid ads if they aren’t shown in the right column? Many paid ads now take the top shelf space on top of organic listings and it’s no surprise that people can’t tell the difference… which can easily explain the rise in PPC ad clicks.

To make things harder on SEOs, information on Google Analytics keeps changing (due to privacy settings in browsers), which makes it harder for to get visitor info on keyword data. And as you can guess, the only way to get this “true” data is through AdWords.

So, what’s the moral of this story? Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Even if you’ve invested in an organic SEO campaign, you can’t expect it to be the only thing to boost business. It helps to supplement it with other strategies including: social media, video marketing, traditional offline marketing, word of mouth advertising and paid ads. Think of these assets as your business portfolio and diversify!

Have any questions about search engine optimization or paid ads? Don’t hesitate to consult with our PPC company about starting a paid search campaign today. Free consultations – 323-340-4010.

Yahoo! always seems be overshadowed by the giant that is Google, so it’s good to see something new from them.

Yahoo! Search Clues allows users to search keyword trends over time. You can also see demographics such as: age, gender, income and location. Pretty neat right? And it can definitely come in handy on your PPC or SEO campaigns.

I think the visual comparison between PPC and SEO is cool and probably accurate. Don’t you think? SEO is more of a consistent and long term tactic while paid search can fluctuate depending on different factors.

Are you interested in learning more about how your business can benefit from a pay per click campaign? Join our PPC manager, Dillon Zachara, as he answers the top 5 questions about pay per click advertising.

1) What are some advantages of having an agency manage your PPC campaign rather than doing it yourself?

One, search agency’s have already gone through the process of finding certified professionals that have the skills to optimize and manage a PPC campaign in a way that will maximize business opportunities. An agency also has dedicated representatives at the major search engines that can be contacted directly and quickly when technical issues arise. Finally, web marketing agency’s generally have more resources and tools for research available than individuals do, leading to a higher quality ad campaign.

2) What are the top misconceptions that people have about PPC?

The top misconception is probably that you can just choose a bunch of keywords, toss them in one ad group and one campaign, write an ad or two, and let it run without tweaking it. While this may seem obvious to some who’ve done work with PPC, it isn’t known or practiced by many newcomers to the trade.

3) Tips for creating effective PPC ads?

Ad copy is incredibly important and often gets overlooked. Always A/B split test ads, having more than one running to test for the optimal copy. Everyone managing a PPC campaign should also look into new developments, such as adding addresses for local ads and sitelinks in ad copy. Also with mobile searches becoming increasingly popular, always add a phone number and enable the click-to-call option. Finally, make sure your landing pages look great, otherwise your money is being wasted on a click that won’t convert.

4) What are some common mistakes inexperienced marketers make regarding PPC?

In general, I would say the most common pitfall is just not checking a campaign enough. I like to look through what is happening both in Adwords and Analytics at least once/day for each campaign. That doesn’t necessarily mean that changes should be made that often, but each time the stats are analyzed, a bit more information is being gathered in order to make the correct change/adjustment when necessary.

That pitfall can go the other way too though, where businesses make way too many changes and don’t allow a campaign to find it’s ‘sweet spot’. PPC is all about finding the right balance between keywords, bids, ad copy, running times, and geo-targets. If you make a change and then undo it after only 20 clicks or so, you’re not letting the affects of that change be realized.

5) Favorite and least favorite aspects of PPC?

My favorite aspect of PPC is the amount of control and flexibility you can have over what is happening within the campaign. I love being able to change who sees any particular ad in a matter of minutes. Close after that, my next favorite aspect is the detail and specificity that you can get with reports in PPC campaigns. I also really enjoy monitoring the constant upgrades and changes in the industry. Right now is really an exciting time for PPC search advertising!

My least favorite aspect would probably be the fact that you can’t physically see who is clicking on an ad. Obviously this won’t be changing anytime soon, but the lack of personal interaction can be a little frustrating.

Learn more about how PPC consultants can help your business today. Dillon will be more than happy to answer some of your burning questions, so feel free to ask!

The ongoing debate between organic SEO and PPC has continued to be a hot topic among many website creators. The debate between using organic SEO or Pay Per Click continues to be hot with ups and downs to both of them. Which one is best? Some experts say that both organic and paid searches are important. They are both important for the success of a website and business advertising on the web. Organic SEO is accomplished by optimizing your webpage and using link popularity by acquiring links that direct people to your site and the optimization gives the site higher rankings based on your chosen keywords and popularity based on its links.

PPC advertising is when you actually buy clicks or visitors from a search engine. PPC is a market place and you are buying clients and selling then a product at a profit that hopefully lets you dominate the marketplace .The keywords are bid for or you are buying them. Anytime you are making money organically it is a good idea to try it on the PPC side. One of the most important things to think about is the time in which the results are needed. One of the downfalls of organic or natural marketing is that it takes time to see the impact of linking and other organic SEO techniques. Every site would benefit from organic SEO and traffic is great from all businesses. In terms of putting resources into organic SEO, the kind of sites that can benefit from this type of campaign are those who need a large audience and a larger body of traffic. Organic SEO is seen as more trustworthy and be more sincere than PPC.

Professionals recommend that both organic optimization and PPC advertising be used together. It is very important to know how to stay in front of the competition. One good way to see if your SEO is working by looking at Google’s quality search ranking for how useful and good any particular website is. Further, websites that rank high organically are also most likely to be less expensive for pay per click campaigns.

PPC is great if you are starting a new site and you believe in the product it is a faster way to get a greater audience as opposed to natural SEO. In the meantime it would be wise to get the organic SEO campaign on track drawing from the data that the PPC advertising results have given you. PPC search results are easier to predict in terms of ROI and can provide immediate results and traffic, and possibly revenue. Paid placement search is also evolving. Which sites does PPC or SEO work best for? SEO works great for blogs while hardly anyone tries to use PPC on a blog. Ecommerce stores, for instance probably spend 99% on PPC advertising. Sites not necessarily focused on selling a product are probably better off sticking to SEO. In conclusion both SEO and PPC offer great tools to webmasters looking to promote their sites. Keep posted for more articles to come!